It has long been a goal in the art to communicate with a hearing aid for various purposes. Wired connections are known but undesirable because of the exposed connector in the hearing aid. It is known in the art to use a “wireless interconnection” to program hearing aids; see U.S. Pat. No. 6,888,948 (Hagen et al.). Transferring programming data to a hearing aid is disclosed. Transferring data from a hearing aid is not disclosed in the Hagen et al. patent.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,947,432 (Tøpholm) discloses programming a hearing aid using either RF or ultrasonic signals from a hand held controller and using identity codes to distinguish the hearing aids worn by a user from other hearing aids. U.S. Pat. No. 5,012,520 (Steeger) discloses not using “airborne sound transmission” and encoding and decoding the entire data stream to a hearing aid. U.S. Pat. No. 5,202,927 (Tøpholm) discloses programming the response of a hearing aid to suit ambient conditions. U.S. Pat. No. 5,909,497 (Alexandrescu) discloses acoustically coupling to a hearing aid, sending programming information with a leader to identify the data as program information, and detecting the leader to switch the hearing aid to a programming mode. The leader may include identification codes. U.S. Pat. No. 6,035,050 (Weinfurtner et al.) discloses a hand held control for programming and controlling a hearing aid. U.S. Pat. No. 6,115,478 (Schneider) discloses encoding a signal for a hearing aid by the presence and absence of signals in frequency sub-bands as generated by a sound card in a personal computer.
In general, the prior art describes systems for those familiar with, or at least comfortable with, sophisticated electronics. The fabled inability of people to program their video cassette recorders suggests that programmable hearing aids of the prior art may be more pleasing to the people who designed them than to the people who must use them. In short, there is a need for simplicity or, at least, the appearance of simplicity in programmable hearing aids.
Audiologists are presumably comfortable with sophisticated electronics but many situations arise when an audiologist is unavailable, either because of time or distance. Hearing aids can become lost or damaged for a variety of reasons, particularly for users at each end of the age spectrum. It would be a great convenience to be able to program a hearing aid at home or wherever a user happened to be and not require a trained technician for programming or adjustment.
Hearing aids are frequently provided for both ears. Although it is known in the art to provide some sort of identity signal, there is a need for a system that provides a unique identity for each hearing aid, yet the identification process is invisible to the user.
As defined in the art, “hearing aid” and “master hearing aid” are separate elements. It is desired to provide a single device that performs both functions. By having a hearing aid perform a hearing test, one has a test device that exactly matches the hearing aid because they are one and the same. The location in the ear is the same for test and use, and the chamber in the ear canal is the same for test and use. The results are inherently more accurate than with separate audiometers and hearing aids.
Although many “multiband” digital hearing aids are on the market, many with sixteen or more frequency bands, a hearing test typically uses only five or six different frequencies and the results are extrapolated for the sixteen frequency bands. Accuracy of a hearing test can be further improved by testing within each band available in a hearing aid.
Hearing tests often take place in an individual having one ear with distinctly better hearing than the other ear. It is desired to provide a test that accommodates such situations and reliably and accurately tests each ear independently.
A hearing aid that provides noise cancellation in the ear canal is known in the art. The sounds in the ear canal are detected by a microphone in a hearing aid and are used to program a filter coupled to an external microphone in the hearing aid for reducing the sounds to a minimum. It is desired to combine noise cancellation with a hearing test that does not need a special chamber or special test apparatus. By using noise cancellation, a hearing test is made more accurate because the threshold of hearing is lowered (less noise obscuring a test signal).
Although hand held controls for hearing aids are known, such controls tend to be relatively large complicated devices with many buttons or switches. Of the patents named above, the Weinfurtner et al. patent describes the simplest, with ten buttons and a display. A corresponding product does not appear to be on the market from the patent owner. The patent owner does sell a controller with a display and a few buttons for adjusting amplitude and “program” (frequency response). The controller does not program a hearing aid, it merely selects one previously stored in the hearing aid by other means.
In view of the foregoing, it is therefore an object of the invention to provide method for identifying hearing aids that indicates for which ear the hearing aid is intended.
A further object of the invention is to provide a system for identifying a replacement hearing aid.
Another object of the invention is to provide a method for pairing hearing aids to indicate indicating that there are two hearing aids needed, even if one hearing aid should become lost or inoperative.